Danny Horta

About

I am a Flatiron Research Fellow in the Nearby Universe group at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. In 2025, I will be a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.

I obtained my PhD in 2022 at the Astrophysics Research Institute (Liverpool, UK). For this work, I was recently awarded the IAU best PhD prize (2022) in the division for galaxies and cosmology

I am what people call a “spanish-geordie”. This means that I can cook a paella and sing to Blaydon races. I also used to be a professional basketball player before turning to astronomy.

Research

My research ranges from unravelling the genesis of our Galaxy, to understanding the formation and evolution of globular clusters, to mapping the amount of mass and dark matter in the Milky Way, and developing generative models to tackle and digest the vast amount of stellar survey data.

I am a big fan of using spectroscopic data (e.g., APOGEE), and like to combine this with astrometric data from the Gaia mission to learn new things about our Galaxy. Thus, I spend a lot of time analysing/modelling big data from large-scale surveys of the Milky Way. I also like comparing these data to cosmological numerical simulations (e.g., FIRE, EAGLE, E-MOSAICS)

Publications

My full list of publications can be found here, but here are some highlights:

Discovery of a major building block of the halo, link

Measuring orbits, mass density, and dark matter with element abundances, link

The mass from destroyed globular clusters in the Milky Way, link

Chemically characterising halo substructure in the Galaxy, link

Inferring the properties of proto-Milky Way populations, link

Inference of the star formation of the Milky Way disc from chemical abundances, link

Linking globular cluster formation across redshifts, link

The observable properties of galaxy accretion events in Milky Way-like galaxies, link

Short CV

Employment and education

- 2022-present: Flatiron Research Fellow in the Nearby Universe group at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, New York USA.

- 2018-2022: PhD student at the Astrophysics Research institute, Liverpool UK

- 2014-2018: Bachelors and Master's student in Physics with Astrophysics at Northumbria University, Newcastle UK

My full CV and list of publications can be found here.